Musings of Jack Barrow, blogging about a life of writing and philosophy; creating fiction and non fiction, sourced from pop philosophy and the irrational. Occasional outbursts on matters political, comical or just the downright infuriating. Currently writing a travelogue about a six week tour of the 39 historic counties of England while trying to earn enough money for a new garden fence.

Tuesday, 3 August 2010

I'm a bit dissapointed with Blogger.com

Hi all

New post to come shortly, hopefully today, but I want to quickly express my frustration with Blogger.com. I've found it a bit awkward to use and the search facility seems to be pretty rubbish too. Something which amazes me when you consider it's part of Google.

I chose Blogger.com because I imagined that it would come up in Google searches very easily. So I was completely amazed that I had to register it with Google and all the other search engines. I might be able to understand that with other engines but you would imagine that Google would know of a new blog on it's servers from the start. When I posted the G20/Ian Tomlinson post I was very disappointed that nobody would be able to find it. (I believe this discussion should be as wide as possible. See my post of July 22.) Of course I understand that people will chose weather or not to read my blog but if they never know of it's existence then how can people make that decision.

Lately it's been asking me to give my log in details each time and when that doesn't work it puts me through a lengthy password reset process that just drains all my enthusiasm to write when I want to. If they don't sort that out I'll be off.

I had been thinking that if it comes to the crunch, i.e. I have more instances of difficulty logging in, then I would move my full archive over to another blog service. However, my preference would have been Blogspot.com but checking that out I find that Blogger and Blogspot are part of the same service so I suppose that means that Google owns my arse now.

That's all a bit unfortunate because up until today I have always had fairly positive emotions towards Google. Please don't mess it up guys.

Who is Jack Barrow?

I live in Hertfordshire, England, where I write about popular philosophy in modern life. I have a particular interest in the way people are rejecting mainstream religion and creating their own philosophies from the bottom up. These ideas cannot really be described as theological in the way that western religions are and they seem closer to eastern mysticism such Buddhism or Zen, while being dressed up with symbolism drawn from folkloric sources such as Tarot or the Zodiac. I try to bring an intellectual rigour to such subjects instead of merely accepting statements such as the incredibly fluffy idea of, 'everything has an opposite!' No it doesn't! What's the opposite of a football?

My first novel, The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil has recently been released worldwide after receiving excellent reviews in the UK. I'm currently working on a travelogue, which is distracting me from working on the second novel about an end of the world religious cult, Morris Men practised in the martial arts and the accidental destruction of a literary festival.